Tag Archives: berlin

The Gramophone Company decided to step up their recording programme in 1899 by sending Fred Gaisberg to the continent to record local artists in several countries. He was to take the recently arrived William Sinkler Darby with him as his assistant. It was to be the first of many great adventures that the two would share in pursuit of “capturing the sounds out of the air.” Here is a picture of the pair of them messing about. Fred is the one looking devotedly at his partner.

The “portable” recording equipment they took with them was anything but… It comprised six large packing cases which weighed up to 260lb’s each.

Birnbaum was in fact a Londoner, born in 1865 to Russian-German parents. He would go on to a significant career with The Gramophone Company in both Russia and Germany.

The three of them reached Leipzig in May 1899 and began sessions on May 17th. Their very first recordings sessions in their first “foreign” city would reap 213 7″ recordings. Recorded artists included the Leipziger Musiker Vereiningung

Welcome to The Sound Of The Hound

This dog blog is dedicated to the history of recorded music. We are specifically interested in the fine work of the EMI Group Archive Trust but we want to look wider at how the sound got on the rounds and all the widgets that made the digits.

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George Martin on Abbey Road Studios

"...one can sense the presence of the great engineers and producers of the past, long since gone. Names which may mean little to the average man, but great people such as Arthur Clarke, Dougie Larter, Bob Beckett, Charlie Anderson, Walter Legge, Charlie Thomas and my dear own mentor, Oscar Preuss, who taught me so much. These men flew the record industry in open cockpits by the seat of their pants, and paved the way for the modern, jetstream, computerised machine that today's young talents have to guide."